But while Zafar's tale, ending in his exile and death in Rangoon, is moving, Dalrymple's insistence that there are “clear lessons” to be learnt from his “peaceful and tolerant attitude to life” is puzzling.
However literate and charming, Zafar was out of touch with all but the elite of his people. Apolitical both by necessity and inclination, he constantly begged for “retreat and seclusion” and threatened to “go off into retirement in Mecca,” which makes Dalrymple's assertion that “realism and acceptance were always qualities Zafar excelled in” rather eccentric.
Dalrymple is forced into such contradictions by the rhetoric of The Last Mughal, in which Zafar's Delhi has to act as the type of every liberal golden age threatened by the forces of extremism. Similarly, Sufism becomes a shorthand for the qualities Dalrymple, along with many liberal Westerners, would like to see in Islam today: tolerance, pluralism, artistic sophistication and an essential apoliticism. Aesthetically, this may be understandable — a ghazal is more melodious than a fatwa — politically, it is nonsensical. But these are arguments with the superstructure of The Last Mughal rather than its substance. This is a skillfully written, impeccably researched history. It should not have to be, in addition, a prescription for our contemporary woes.
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